SABER

Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry

SDL designed, fabricated, integrated, tested, and calibrated the SABER instrument, a 10-channel cryogenic infrared (1.27 to 16.9 µm) radiometer. SABER is one of four instruments on NASA's Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission, launched in December 2001.

SABER’s science objectives are to globally explore the mesosphere and lower thermosphere and make global day/night vertical profile measurements of atmospheric temperature, density, and pressure. The mission focuses on the least understood portion of the Earth’s atmospheric region—the Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere/Ionosphere—located approximately 40 to 110 miles above the Earth. Data collected is being used to predict weather and global warming.

The TIMED mission has been extended by NASA numerous times and has now collected data over an entire solar cycle, which helps in its goal to differentiate the Sun's effects on the atmosphere from other effects. SABER’s thermal, optical, electrical, and pointing systems are performing impeccably with no anomalies in mission operation functionality after nearly two decades on-orbit.